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These works by Bethany Duvall-Francisco are displayed with permission from the author. |
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Bethany DuVall- Francisco |
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Hope
Faith keeps us going. Hope keeps us warm. I don’t hope anymore. I pray.
Lord, please.
I believe.
Lord, Your will be done.
The flame of my own hope was extinguished way back in the journey. Now it is more an attitude of resolution.
Lord, if You ordain it to be, let it be.
I trust, I believe, I even have joy. But hope… hope is the IF factor.
To say I hope God’s word is true is to leave room for it not to be.
To say I hope God will bring good things to me is to admit that He might not.
I can count the hopeful adults in my life on one hand. They are full of wonder and beautiful to watch. They make life feel like it has been blown from a bubble wand. . They are a little silly, in their childlikeness.
I don’t know where to go to get the flame. And I’m not sure I want it.
Faith is reliable, the metonym that beats out steady footsteps, however unpredictable the path.
Hope lets us get caught in our own wants, makes us desire the path to go in a particular direction, lets something in us die when our footsteps curve away from our own desires. Hope clouds our vision when our hopes go unrealized. We think that hard times are bad because of hope, and that easy times are good.
I like being disabused of hope. It removes the disappointment, and then when pleasant things happen, I am grateful. And when ugly things happen, I am grateful still. Letting go of hope has been letting go of fear.
Hope lets us think ugly things are bad; faith lets us know that all things work together for God’s glory. |
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Singing Autumn In
Fall has come; I feel like dancing Her arrival deserves a trumpet herald. The leaves of my heart will change Mistakes Becoming gold and orange, alizarin and then fluttering away to leave the bare and beautiful skeleton of who I am Wick and spry In spite of Winter. I will spend the colder days inside myself, Enwombed in my naked branches Reconstructing Preparing for Spring and a green-Phoenix birth That will make men stop and with wonder say: “This tree I thought was dead, it lives more beautifully than last year.” |